I thought I should write about the struggling with fertility situation the midst of a pandemic. Obviously, as for us all, everything is trippy and weird. My husband is working from home, so we see a lot of each other. We are doing pretty well with this, and we still like one another, so that's good. I heard that there was a surge of divorces in China after the lockdown there. We are both going stir crazy however. I want to to go to a coffee shop something fierce. It's different for me, since I work alone, in my art studio. So I kind of enjoy the company during the day. Never have quite figured out how to work doing my art while getting the amount of social interaction I like. But that's a whole different topic.

In mid March, everything stopped. I had already stopped going to the naturopath, and gave up on doing IUI and Letrozole, after they tested me and found my AMH had gone down from .54 to .174. My naturopath said there was nothing more she could for and told us to do IVF immediately. (That was upsetting.) But I was glad to be done working with her.

I had gotten very frustrated after feeling like I kept trusting practitioners and finding out they were doing things wrong. I felt let down by my first naturopath, who, when I was 36, did not test my AMH or FSH to see how my ovarian reserve was doing. I didn't know better till a year ago, and it's awful to think some of this might have been avoided if I'd known about it sooner. That's what I went to see her about in the first place: to prevent trouble in this area and make sure things were fine. (Come on!)

I also didn't appreciate my recent naturopaths not knowing about the difference between Ubiquinol and Ubiquinone. I asked about it specifically, to be sure I was getting the right kind, and she gave me Ubiquinone and too low a dosage, to do anything for egg quality, according to the research I've seen. (Ubiquinone is converted by the body to ubiquinol, so taking Ubiquinol is more efficient. But you still need quite a bit to get the job done. https://natural-fertility-info.com/antioxidant-ubiquinol.html) So I found out that I was taking the wrong form, in the wrong dose, at the direction of my naturopath. My other recent naturopath didn't know either. (Arg!)

So with all that, I decided that all my practitioners could shove off and I was going to follow the advice listed in the book It Starts with the Egg, by Rebecca Fett. She has a lot of information, a lot of scientific studies, and a clear and concise manner that is very helpful.

The emotional toll with all this is significant, so I needed to step away as much as possible from worrying, outside judgment and trying to do everything exactly right under the threat of ruining my family. I was still doing acupuncture up until the pandemic happened, and my acupuncturist was probably the most helpful person I have worked with, striking a balance of nutritional support, supplements and encouraging me to do the medical testing that I was avoiding (namely, the HSG). I did the HSG (that's the hysterosalpinogram, where they check to see your fallopian tubes aren't blocked), and it quick, wasn't painful like I expected, and everything was fine.

I then got connected up with the folks at the fertility clinic. We are very fortunate that my husband's job has great insurance coverage for IVF. It's not fair that a lot of people wouldn't be able to do what we can because of that good insurance, but here we are. I'm grateful for myself, even though it's a system of inequality and it's not fair. This stuff is expensive, and our medical system is psychotic. Anyway...

In February and March we were doing the screening to prepare for IVF. I had an antral follicle count, which showed eight follicles, which was more than they expected based on my AMH, so that was great news.

Speaking of AMH, I don't entirely trust that number. Both because a different naturopath I had a short consult with told me that seemed like too big a drop in a short time, which made him suspicious of some sort of error. Also because there are studies that show that having a low AMH doesn't actually affect fertility rates that much. I'm not saying it's meaningless, but I am not going to judge my future or my body based on one test result. AMH is mostly used as a gauge to tell how good a candidate for IVF a woman is as an indicator of how many eggs she can produce for IVF. So since my follicle count came back better than they expected, I consider that more significant than the AMH. I was so thankful for any piece of good news, for freakin' once in this whole ordeal.

So we got all the stuff set up, tested my husband for sexually transmitted diseases and me for vitamin D, and talked to the genetic counselor to see what kind of testing on the embryos we might want to do, the whole bit. And then couldn't do anything more, because the pandemic happened, and they put a hold on "elective" medical procedures. I understand the purpose, of course, but calling them elective makes them sound unimportant, which is really not the case.

I and many many other women are worried about this throwing a wrench in our lives when this is time-sensitive, important stuff. I don't object to them putting a hold on elective procedures, it is true that my life is not in jeopardy, and a lot of peoples' are right now. But I did and do hope that it isn't a year long hold. A couple of months is not a huge deal for our life plans. A year is.

The other day Oregon Governor Brown said that elective medical procedures can start up again this week, provided they have enough supplies and whatnot, so that is great news. As of now things are still on hold, while they wait for the okay from the main reproductive medicine board bigwigs (American Society for Reproductive Medicine) and the bigwigs at the hospital.

I really meant to talk about the emotional side of all this, but I'll do that in the next post, since this is longer than I intended.